


Blah, Blah, Meow, Meow

by Zara_Zee



Category: Dark Angel
Genre: Animal Transformation, Bottom Alec, Catboy!Alec, DA_Reversebang - Freeform, M/M, Mating Cycles/In Heat, Pseudoscience
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-22
Updated: 2014-07-22
Packaged: 2018-02-09 22:44:33
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 16,560
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2000748
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Zara_Zee/pseuds/Zara_Zee
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>Alec made a low growling noise. “Oh yeah,” he said. “Everything’s just peachy. I have a tail, Logan. I had to tear a hole in my jeans to give it some room! And I’ve got ears like Yoda and an overwhelming desire to scratch Max’s eyes out. And you…don’t smell threatening, so my stupid feline instincts have receded enough for my human brain to pick up the reins,” Alec frowned. “So to speak.”</i>
</p>
<p>In which someone messes with Alec's genetic cocktail and the feline DNA is uh... accentuated.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This is not only my first time participating in the da_reversebang, it's my first ever Dark Angel fic. And what fun it was to write! A HUGE thank you to my artist, rhapsodean, for creating the initial art prompt that inspired the story and for being such incredible fun to work with. I couldn't have asked for a better collaborative partner! You rock, girl! :) Go and leave love at her [art post here](http://rhapsodean.livejournal.com/840.html) ...the additional pieces she did for the story are AMAZING!!!  
> Thanks always to my beta extraordinaire, 9tiptoes, who never fails to step up to the plate, no matter what I send her to beta read. She stepped out of her home fandom for this one and I am grateful as always.  
> A final thank you to the community mod for running the challenge. It's been a blast! :)  
> \-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

**A** t most workplaces, or so Alec had heard, if your employment got terminated it meant a pink slip, a final pay check, an escort off the premises, and then you were pretty much fucked until you could find yourself a new job.

People who got terminated by Manticore were pretty much just fucked, because Manticore believed in terminating employment with extreme prejudice, which meant that, mostly, you got escorted off the premises in a body bag. Occasionally somebody was allowed to move on with their heart still beating; because they had powerful family; because they had knowledge Manticore might need in the future; because it suited Manticore that they remain alive, for the moment.

After the compound burned to the ground, _everyone_ who didn’t run far enough, fast enough was terminated with extreme prejudice. And then Ames White and his team started searching out, rounding up and gunning down anyone who’d ever worked for Manticore, ever, no matter what knowledge they had or how powerful their family.

Geneticist Dr Virginia Rossi may have been a leading expert in Molecular Genetics, specialising in Gene Expression and Mutation, she may have been the person responsible for the annoying as fuck reappearing barcodes that made it difficult for the x-series to truly pass as human, but she was also paranoid enough to go completely off the grid when she left Manticore five years ago.

Luckily for her, White and his cronies hadn’t been able to find her.

Luckily for Alec, he had skills that the Familiars would balk at using outside of their precious breeding program; skills that he may have been taught by Manticore trainers, but which he’d perfected all on his lonesome. Well, no. Not exactly all on his lonesome, because it took two (at least) to tango, so to speak. Anyway, the point being that Alec certainly wasn’t above using any of his skills for the good of a mission and when he’d gotten a bead on Dr Rossi through his contacts among the steelheads, when he’d staked out the bar where she spent most of her evenings unwinding and saw the way she churned through attractive young men, well, Alec had seen an in.

Raising Joshua’s flag above Terminal City had been…it had been important strategically. If Alec had also found that it caused an ache in his chest, a lump in his throat and a whole bunch of squishy feelings that would definitely have earned him a stint in Psy-ops, back in the day, well…that was nobody’s business but his own.

The snarling, spitting racists and the religious nuts had made it clear in their television interviews that they didn’t even see Transgenics as people, so it became important that they adopted the trappings of civilised human nationhood; a recognisable territory, a system of government and a recognisable leadership—a figurehead the humans could negotiate with. Alec wasn’t stupid; he knew that minorities always got fucked over, but the Manticore alumni had been built for survival. If only people would stop actively trying to kill them, he was sure they could hold their own alright, out in the real world.

Terminal City held its first democratic elections the day after the flag went up, and Max and Mole were elected joint leaders of Terminal City. It had been Max’s suggestion that they needed two leaders, one to represent the interests of the x-series and another to represent the interests of the anomalies. The two groups of Transgenics had different needs and concerns and the anomalies had initially been hostile to the x-series, because they could (and did) pass as human (barcodes and higher body temperatures notwithstanding).  Mole was a natural leader, just as Max was; he was concerned for the well-being of his people and he had the potential to cause trouble if he didn’t feel listened to. Putting him up for election as co-leader had been a smart strategic move.  Luke had been elected Mole’s deputy and Alec had somehow found himself elected Max’s deputy – he hadn’t even been aware he’d been nominated and in all honesty, he still wasn’t quite sure how he felt about it.

The majority of Alec’s Manticore training had been for solo missions; assassinations mostly, but also industrial espionage and retrievals—goods, people, whatever it was Manticore decided they wanted brought to them. But he’d done his fair share of team missions too. Alec played well with others; he was funny, attractive and personable, he knew how to get what he wanted from people and he was always at the center of everything; the life of the party. When he wanted to be.

He was also good at recon and infiltration, which is why Max had tasked him with finding safe passage (past the military blockade and the vigilantes) in and out of Terminal City for their human allies. It took him all of six hours to determine the best location for Dix and his team of anomalies to make a tunnel and then he went back to his own pet project, trying to figure out a way to permanently remove the barcodes, because now that there were so many of them, breaking into tattoo parlors to laser them off every two weeks was going to be a logistical nightmare. And while they could (and would if they had to) steal a few medical lasers to keep in TC, a permanent solution to the barcode problem would be tactically advantageous. And what better person to help with the problem than the person who’d caused it in the first place?

      Alec didn’t want to get anyone’s hopes up, so he didn’t bother to tell Max—or anyone else—what he was up to. He sauntered across the compound and had almost made it to the tunnel entrance when he was stopped by Max’s voice.

“Hey, Alec. Got a minute?”

“Sorry, Max,” he rolled his shoulders. “I’m just on my way out to hustle up a little cash for the cause.”

Max looked him over with what could only be described as disapproval.

“What?” Alec glanced down at his tight jeans and even tighter tee-shirt. “There a problem?”

Max put her hands on her hips and raised an eyebrow. “Showing a lotta skin there, Alec. Just wondering what type of ‘hustling’ you’re planning.”

Alec gave her a bright, empty smile. “Whatever works, right Maxi?”

Max drew her lips in tightly, her expression pissy.

“Oh that’s right,” Alec drawled, before she could presume to pass judgement on him, “you skipped out of Manticore way before puberty, didn’t you? Missed out on all the ‘special’ training.”

Her look of horror was suitably gratifying and his anger carried him down through the tunnel and up out onto the street.

Alec knew he had to get his head back in the game quickly; the streets were a dangerous place for a Transgenic these days, a view that was vindicated when a sector cop stepped out of his vehicle, right into Alec’s path. He had one of those new temperature gauges in his hand. “Hold it right there,” he barked at Alec.

Alec held a finger up in the air and then made a big show of sneezing and coughing.

“Ah man,” he said, wiping his forearm across his nose. “This goddamn ‘flu sux ass, just can’t shake it,” he frowned. “I hope it ain’t AIDS cuz clients always pay extra for uncovered. Anyway,” he leered at the cop and then cocked out a hip in a nasty parody of a seductive pose, “what can I do for _you_ , officer?”

The cop couldn’t get away from him fast enough. Alec watched his retreat with a cynically twisted lip and then sighed. “Fuck my life,” he said to the sky, before continuing to the bar where Virginia Rossi liked to pick up toy boys.

It didn’t take long to attract Virginia’s attention; just a boisterously loud pool game, complete with a lot of unsubtle cue fondling and bending over the table wiggling his ass. As soon as he’d collected his winnings (which he fanned out and waved around obnoxiously) he went to the bar for a drink. When he tried to pay, the bartender shook his head. “Already taken care of,” he nodded behind him. Alec looked over his shoulder and Virginia raised her champagne glass in his direction.

“Cool,” Alec muttered, raising his own glass. “Free beer.”

The barkeep rapped on the table in front of him. “Go and say thank you, kid. Least you can do when a lady buys you a drink.”

Alec raised an eyebrow and then shrugged and sauntered across to Virginia’s table.

“Thanks for the drink,” he said.

Virginia smiled a bright red smile. Matching long red fingernails were wrapped around the stem of her champagne flute. She tossed her short, dyed black hair and then thrust out her substantial bosom in the kind of obvious gesture that Alec appreciated. She was the wrong side of forty, but she wasn’t unattractive. He could totally do this.

“Have a seat, kitten,” she purred.

Kitten? That was a new one. Alec sat. He took a gulp of his beer and then grinned at his benefactress. 

“I’m Alec,” he said.

“Virginia. By name, not by nature.”

Alec raised an eyebrow and took a sip of his beer. “So,” he said, “I take it you’re a fan of pool?”

Virginia chuckled. “I’m a fan of tight young asses bent over pool tables.”

Alec stared at her. “Huh. Well, I’m a fan of women who aren’t afraid to go after what they want. So I guess the question is,” he leaned forward, his eyes fixed on hers, “what do you want, Virginia?”

Virginia smiled. “I want you, Alec,” she said.

She took him back to her place, a condo with a lot of glass and chrome. It was in the same district that Logan used to live in, before White and his cronies smashed his place to pieces. Alec whistled low and loud. “Nice place,” he ran a casual hand over the bookshelf and then paused, picking out a text book on evolutionary genetics that his eagle eye had spotted from the doorway.

“Is this how you made your money?”

Virginia narrowed her eyes. “What do you know about genetics?”

Alec ran a hand over the back of his neck, drawing her attention, and then turned around, letting her get a good look at his barcode-free neck. Goddamn that lasering hurt like a bitch.

“I’m majoring in molecular bioscience at UW. Was planning on working for a biotech company once I graduate, but with all that freaky Manticore shit that’s been going down, I bet everyone in the biotechnology sector is gonna have a lot of trouble getting funding, the next few years.”

 Virginia inclined her head and studied him like a specimen under a microscope. “ _You’re_ studying molecular bioscience?”

“Hey! Just because I’m hot, it doesn’t mean I don’t have a brain too. And if you’re gonna objectify me,” Alec sidled up to her and put his hands on her hips, “you could at least wait until we’re in bed.”

 “Hands at your side, soldier,” Virginia barked, and Alec barely stopped himself from snapping to attention.

He gave her a cheeky grin. “Role play. Alright. I can get into that.” He put his arms by his sides. “Command me, baby.”

By the end of the evening Alec was exhausted and his tongue was really sore, but Virginia ordered him to stay the night and he was only too happy to comply. As soon as Virginia was asleep, he would have a perfect opportunity to go through her office looking for any papers on the barcode technology, and to download the contents of her computer onto a flash drive.  Alec closed his eyes and bided his time, letting Virginia’s slow, even breathing lull him.

He woke up some time later, shackled to a narrow cot in a cage.

“Morning, Kitten,” Virginia trilled from outside the cage. “And what an apt moniker that is for you too, given the amount of feline DNA in your cocktail.”

Alec frowned at her. His mouth felt dry and cotton woolly and his head ached.

“You drugged me?”

“I did. Just a little gas I’ve developed, specifically for x-series Transgenics; one little puff, straight in your face, while you were lying next to me in bed. And don’t bother trying to lie your way out of this, Kitten. I ran your DNA while you were unconscious. You’re X-5; 494 to be exact.”

Alec ran a hand across his mouth.

“What are you gonna do? Hand me over to White and hope that he doesn’t kill you too?”

Virginia chuckled. “Oh no, Kitten. I’ve got something much more lucrative in mind for you.”

 


	2. Chapter 2

**_B_ ** _rrr, Brrr, Brrr_

Max paced the floor of Terminal City’s HQ, her cell phone pressed to her ear and her hand on her hip.

“Pick up the phone, pick up the phone,” she chanted under her breath.

_“Hi. You know who you’ve called and you know what to do.” Beep._

‘Goddamn it, Alec!” Max snapped her phone shut. There was no point leaving him another message. She’d already left five. If her 2IC didn’t call her on the strength of those…and the, uh, fifty-eight missed calls…he wasn’t going to call.

Probably couldn’t call. _Images of Biggs strung up upside down over a burning X battered their way into her mind from the dark corner where she tried to keep those memories walled off._

“Goddamn it, Alec!” she said again, trying—pretty unsuccessfully if she were honest with herself—to hide her fear behind a veneer of anger.

“Max!” Mole called her across to the main console. “Logan for you.”

Max was a blur of speed. “You’ve got something?” She leaned forward, her palms on the desk and her eyes fixed on the monitor.

Logan nodded. His glasses were askew, he was unshaven and his hair looked like it hadn’t seen a comb in days. Max might’ve found it adorable if not for the grave expression on his face. “I’ve had an email from him.”

Max blinked. “An…email? Oh. That’s nice. An email?” She straightened up and folded her arms across her chest. “Just thought he’d get out of town for a while, did he? Take a vacation.”

“Max?”

“I should’ve known,” Max plopped herself down in the desk chair and glared at the monitor. “Should’ve known he wouldn’t stick around and help once it got hard. When the going gets tough, Alec gets going. He—”

“MAX!”

Max met Logan’s eyes in the monitor. “What? You’re not gonna defend him, are you?”

Logan made that prissy face, lips twisted, eyebrows drawn in; the face that meant she was trying his patience, but he was trying to be mature about it.

“It’s an SOS, set up the day he went missing and programmed to auto-send if he didn’t reset it in three days.”

Oh. Max’s face tightened. “What does it say?”

Logan took his glasses off and massaged the bridge of his nose before pushing them back into place slowly. “Uh, well, to paraphrase, he’s been on the trail of an ex-Manticore geneticist by the name of Virginia Rossi. She was responsible for your barcodes apparently, and Alec got on to her through his contacts in the steelhead underground. He was going to try to make contact with her at a bar called Cherry Sundae. He said if I got this email, it meant he was in trouble.”

“Cherry Sundae,” Max stood up. “Got it.”

“Max wait! If that’s where Alec disappeared from…you shouldn’t go in alone, it could be dangerous.”

Max rolled her eyes. “Relax. I’m just gonna do a little recon. I’ll check in with you later.”

Max hurried away from the monitor before Logan could start to nag. She knew how to do her job; she had this. And besides, it could be dangerous. She couldn’t ask somebody else to take the risk.

\--

Logan copied another snippet of information into the _Virginia Rossi_ folder on his hard drive, read over it, and then frowned. He scrolled back up the very long document until he found the photograph of Dr Rossi that he’d liberated from the DMV database and pasted to the top of the file. His lips thinned and he swore under his breath. He rolled his chair across to one of his other computers and opened an _Eyes Only_ file that he’d started a few months ago.

Matt Sung had called him about a set of thirteen-year-old identical twin girls who’d gone missing out of Chinatown, abducted, witnesses said, by armed men in a black town car. Logan had traced the car to Frankie Moretti, a small time mobster who specialized in the flesh trade. Frankie ran brothels and high class call girls and boys, as well as a lot of the local street trade. Rumor had it that he took special orders too.  Logan had begun to do research on the guy, and then White had traced one of his _Eyes Only_ hacks and Logan’d had to pack up as much as he could and get out of his condo, fast. He’d only just finished setting himself up in Joshua’s old place when the Jam Pony siege had occurred and the shit had hit the fan about Transgenics in a big way. Logan had barely had time to breathe lately, let alone follow up on his open cases.

The pile of facts that he’d managed to dig up on Virginia Rossi included the information that she and Frankie Moretti shared the same Godfather: Deputy Mayor Antonio De Luca (a corrupt official who had his own _Eyes Only_ file). That could probably be explained away; Little Italy wasn’t that big and the Italian community had a tendency to choose community leaders to be Godparents. But in the file that Logan had started on Moretti, there was a surveillance photo that showed him having a breakfast meeting with an unidentified dark-haired woman; a woman who Logan had just recognized was Virginia Rossi. And Logan couldn’t think of a single _good_ reason why a kingpin of the sex industry would be meeting up with a geneticist.

Logan turned to roll back to his other computer and nearly had a heart attack. Max was leaning against the wall, dressed from head-to-toe in black, her hands encased in black leather gloves.

“You look like shit,” she said. “Did you get any sleep last night?”

Logan ignored the question. “Knocking,” he said. “Knocking works. Or calling out when you come in. I swear I’m gonna put a bell on every damn one of you Transgenics.”

Max rolled her eyes. “I know where Virginia Rossi lives,” she said.

“Good,” said Logan, “because the address the DMV has on file for her is a vacant lot.”

“Well, I followed her home last night,” Max’s lips twisted. “Her and the twenty-year-old boy she took home with her. And the way she was all over him,” she laughed, short and brittle, “I guess we know how Alec ‘made contact’, huh?”

“I’m sorry,” Logan said. “I guess it’s not a lot of consolation knowing that he only did it for the good of his mission. Knowing that your boyfriend—”

Max made a small, wounded sound and Logan stopped.

“Logan,” she said, “I can’t…he’s not,” she took a deep breath. “We’re not together, Logan. We never were. I just…told you that so you’d back off. You and I…we can’t…this virus…I…” She stopped and stared at him hard. Logan wasn’t quite sure what she was looking for, some sense of how he was feeling perhaps? Well good luck with that, because he wasn’t sure how he was feeling himself.

“I’m sorry,” she said finally. “For the record, Alec said it was a dick move. He was gonna tell you the truth, that day when he delivered those parts you needed. But after he talked to you, he said that you thinking me and him were an item was probably the best strategy; that you loved me enough to let me go if you thought it would make me happy.”

“He’s a smart guy,” Logan said, voice in neutral.

And then his eyes widened. “He’s also an incredibly attractive guy. And Frankie Moretti takes special orders.”

\--

Logan kept his eyes firmly fixed on the elevator panel that showed the floor numbers as they passed by them on their way up to Virginia’s penthouse.

Max and Alec weren’t together. But Max still didn’t want to date him. They’d discussed it at length over the course of the day and she’d told him that being with him was too exhausting, that she was terrified all the time that she’d accidentally get too close and kill him with the virus, that she was busy now as one of Terminal City’s leaders; that she couldn’t afford to pine after something she couldn’t have or get distracted by thoughts of a cure. _We’re too vulnerable together_ , she told him. _We’ll always be friends, but we can never be more._ She’d said it with such finality. Logan was still reeling from the conversation. Alec had been right. It was far easier for him to believe that Max had moved on happily, then to accept this. But it still hurt that she’d lied to him; tried to manipulate him.

Max was still and silent beside him for twelve floors and then, “ _Incredibly_ attractive?”

Logan frowned. “What?”

“You said Alec was, and I quote, ‘ _incredibly_ attractive.’”

Logan swallowed. “Just stating a fact, Max. Manticore knew what they were doing when they mixed your genetic cocktails. Most of you—the x-series, not the anomalies, obviously—are well within the standard parameters for human physical attractiveness. I guess they saw it as another tool in your arsenal.”

Max thought back to the ‘special training’ Alec had mentioned right before he went missing and felt sick all over again.

“So,” Max cleared her throat. She wanted to keep this light-hearted, to pull Logan out of his funk. “When you say that Alec is ‘ _incredibly_ attractive’, you don’t mean that _you_ find him _incredibly_ attractive? Or is there something you’re not telling us, Logan Cale?”

Logan took his glasses off and pinched at the bridge of his nose, trying to decide how to frame his answer.

“Wow,” Max said after the moment had stretched on a little too long. “That’s a surprise. I didn’t know you swung that way.”

“I don’t,” Logan put his glasses back on and inclined his head. “Usually. But, I’ve, uh, done my share of experimenting and, well, Alec meets certain, uh, physical parameters—”

So much for light-hearted teasing. Max huffed and folded her arms across her chest. “English translation: You don’t normally get with guys, but if you do, Alec is your type.”

Logan wondered if the conversation could get any more awkward. “Physically,” he said. “I don’t think there’d be room in my bed for me, Alec and Alec’s ego.”

Max snorted. “You do know the ego’s all front, right?”

Before Logan could respond, the elevator pinged, the doors opened and Max was out like a shot.

“You sure this is the best way in?” she said brusquely when Logan caught up with her.

 Back to business then. It was probably for the best. Logan nodded. “You saw the building blueprints,” he said. “It’s well-protected against burglary. The front door really is the best way in.”

He and Max were dressed in the uniforms of the building’s security company. They’d timed their arrival to coincide with the shift change and snuck in the front door while the real security people were distracted with the handover.

“Ready?”

Max nodded.  Logan reached out and pressed the penthouse’s doorbell.

It took a moment, but then a disembodied voice responded: “ _Yes_?”

“Evening Ma’am, Building Security.” Logan held up the security pass he’d cobbled together earlier that day. “We’ve had reports of a mutant on the loose in the building. Some kind of Lizard Man.”

There was a short pause and then a crackle. “ _I haven’t seen anything_.”

“The creature was seen heading up this way. It can climb up walls, run across ceilings, and squeeze through small gaps, Ma’am. For your own safety, we need to give your apartment a quick sweep.”

There was an audible sigh and then the door clicked open.

Virginia Rossi was fully made up and smartly dressed in a black pants suit and heels. “Make it quick,” she said. “I’m heading out shortly.”

“Yes, Ma’am,” said Max and punched her in the face.


	3. Chapter 3

**T** here was no sign of Alec in the condo.

Not that Logan had really expected there to be; that would’ve been far too easy. So Logan fired up Virginia’s laptop and got to work cracking her password, while Max rifled through her filing cabinets. Every now and then Max would pull out a file with an interested ‘huh’ and put it on the desk. By the time Logan cracked the password, she had quite a pile; and Virginia Rossi had woken up.

Max stalked across to where they had the geneticist securely tied to a chair and stood in front of her with her arms folded. “Where’s Alec?” she said.

The geneticist laughed from behind her gag.  Max inclined her head and stared at her until she shut up and then she turned to Logan. “You okay there?”

Logan nodded distractedly.

“I’ma take another look around the house. Something…doesn’t feel right. I can’t quite put my finger on what it is, though.”

Max’s first foray through the condo had been fast; she’d raced from room to room at full speed, desperate to find Alec. This time she was in no hurry, searching each room slowly and thoroughly, cataloguing everything, her eyes searching high and low, her brain calculating, and…huh…Max frowned and tilted her head to one side.

The master bedroom should be bigger. Max walked out of the bedroom and surveyed its external walls. The bedroom’s back wall should go back another twelve feet. There was definitely space unaccounted for. Enough space to make a small room.

Max went back into the bedroom and pulled open Virginia’s closet. She yanked the hangers of clothes apart and then ran her sensitive fingertips over the back wall of the closet until she found a release mechanism. Once she had clicked it, the panels of the closet’s false wall slid back to reveal a small room, complete with cage.

Standing inside the cage was Alec.                              

“Omigod! Alec!” she rushed forward.

Alec yowled and hissed, his… _tail_...puffing up and whipping around furiously.  

Max slammed to a stop.

“Omigod. Alec,” she said again.

\--

Logan scrolled down the file, reading fast. Oh, this wasn’t good. Really not good at all.

Apparently, Frankie Moretti had gotten sick of having to trawl through on-line records looking for the perfect match to a client’s requirements; instead, he was having Rossi engineer live sex-toys to order. At first Rossi had experimented with regular humans, with limited success. And then, not long after the Manticore breakout, she’d lucked onto her first x-series subject and realized that they already had such diverse DNA cocktails that they were relatively easy to tweak. And no-one was going to report them missing to the authorities. Logan shut down the project summary file and began to open the individual case files, starting with the most recent, an X-5 named…Alec.

“Logan?”

Max’s voice was right beside his ear and Logan jumped.  “Got something you need to take a look at,” she said.

Logan frowned. “Can it wait? I’ve just found Alec’s case file.”

“Yeah? Well I’ve just found Alec.”

 Logan got to his feet. “Is he okay?”

There was a pause and then Max said, “Well. He’s feisty, I’ll give him that. Spitting and snarling and wagging his tail. Yes. That’s right, Logan. I said _his tail_!” 

Logan blinked. And then he scanned Alec’s case file…and felt bile rising in his throat. What kind of sicko wanted a cat boy sex slave?

He tilted the monitor toward Max and watched as her spine straightened and her expression hardened as she scanned the file.

“Rossi’s got a secret room behind her closet,” Max said, turning away from the monitor and motioning Logan toward the door. “She’s keeping him in there. He doesn’t seem to like me much.”

 “He’s probably reacting to your feline DNA,” Logan lowered his voice as they reached Rossi’s room. “He probably sees you as a threat coming into his territory.”

Max looked up at him, her face dismayed. “I’ll fall back,” she said, “Let you handle this.”

Logan entered the hidden room slowly with his hands held out non-threateningly before him.

“Hey, Alec,” he said. “It’s me, Logan.”

Alec stared at him with unblinking big green eyes.

He didn’t look a lot different. He didn’t have claws and he didn’t have sharp teeth (because why would you order them for your sex toy?). He didn’t have whiskers either. What he did have was elongated, pointy ears, sort of like an elf, or Spock from Star Trek, but with tufts of fur on top. And a rather impressive tail; which was twitching irritably.

    “It’s okay, Alec,” Logan said soothingly. “Everything’s okay.”

Alec made a low growling noise. “Oh yeah,” he said. “Everything’s just peachy. I have a tail, Logan. I had to tear a hole in my jeans to give it some room! And I’ve got ears like Yoda and an overwhelming desire to scratch Max’s eyes out. And you…don’t smell threatening, so my stupid feline instincts have receded enough for my human brain to pick up the reins,” Alec frowned. “So to speak.”

Logan let out a sigh of relief. Alec was still Alec.

“I read your case file,” Logan said. “It looks as though she’s—”

“Amped up my feline DNA. But only certain aspects of it,” Alec held out his hands. “Look Ma, no claws,” he frowned. “I know _what_ she’s done; I just don’t know _why_.”

Logan ran a hand across his chin and then decided that Alec deserved to know. “Sex pets,” he said. “Made to order. She has a buyer lined up.”

Logan watched, fascinated, as Alec’s tail puffed up to twice its previous size, and then a low growling sound started to rumble out of his chest and up his throat.

“Easy there, tiger,” Logan said.

Alec snarled.

“Sorry,” Logan stuttered. “I didn’t…that was an inappropriate word choice. I’m sorry.”

Alec paced a little in his cage and Logan kept up a string of soothing words until the tail went back to its normal size and the growling stopped.

“You okay?” Logan asked cautiously.

Alec grinned, feral and nasty. “Can I tear her throat out?”

Logan shook his head. “No. But we’ll leave her trussed up, surrounded by incriminating evidence, and then call Matt Sung.”

He approached the cage slowly and Alec tracked his every move.

“How about we get you out of here?” Logan suggested.

“The cage door needs a four digit code to unlock it,” Alec said. “If you don’t have the code those vents in the ceiling,” he pointed upward, “will release this gas she’s developed especially for knocking out Transgenics. It’s what she used to subdue me.”

“Max?” Logan said.

“On it,” she replied, from out in the bedroom.

Max entered the cage-room slowly a few minutes later. “Hey Alec,” she said softly.

Alec rubbed a hand across the back of his neck and grimaced. “Sorry about before,” he said. “My inner cat’s having a real hard time not reacting to yours.”

She nodded and turned to Logan. “Code’s 4589. You try it, I’ll go wait out there,” she looked back at Alec, her face fierce. “I told her that every time she gave us the wrong code I’d cut off one of her fingers. I almost hope she lied.”

Alec’s nose scrunched up. “Well I don’t. That stuff’s nasty. We should definitely destroy her stock of it and get rid of any records that contain the formula for it.”

 To Alec’s relief, and Max’s disappointment, the code worked. Alec followed Logan out into Virginia’s bedroom, snagging a dark grey overcoat and a black pork pie hat on his way through the closet to hide his ears and tail.

Max smiled and looked way too pleased with herself.

“What?” Alec glanced behind himself. “Is my tail sticking out?”

Max shook her head. “You and Logan just came out of the closet.”

Alec glared and then stalked past Max and out into the living room where Virginia Rossi was tied to a chair.

“Well Virginia, it’s been,” he frowned, “what’s the exact opposite of ‘fun’?” He stared at her for a moment. “Anyway, see you round,” he turned to go and then paused. “Oh yeah, I forgot,” Alec swung back around and punched her in the face, and Max gasped because he didn’t pull his punch at all and a full-power punch from a Transgenic was definitely enough to kill a human.

Virginia didn’t even lose consciousness and Max looked at Alec in horror.

“She’s had me on some kind of speed and strength inhibitor. But it’s gonna wear off, right Logan? It’s only temporary?”

Logan pushed at his glasses. “I’ll have to go through the case file, but, uh. Probably.”

That seemed to be enough to reassure Alec, but the trust the younger man had in him was misplaced. The truth was, until he had a chance to read through the case file and run some tests, Logan had no idea at all just how permanent any of the changes were.

\--

The tunnel out of Terminal City came up inside one of the sector’s shanty towns. More particularly, it came up inside a decrepit slum-shanty that the Transgenics had created specifically for the purpose of hiding the mouth of the tunnel. A group of anomalies, all of whom looked like an old woman with really bad psoriasis—complete with weeping boils, were responsible for guarding the entrance. They took it in turns to sit on an upturned fruit-packing crate in the slum-shanty’s entrance, the folds of a stinking rag curtain hanging in the doorway behind them. The sight of them tended to put the humans off looking too closely. 

“Hilda,” Alec nodded to today’s guard as he followed Logan and Max past her and into the tunnel. His ears were flat and his tail was twitching and the _scents_ as they moved into the tunnel were overwhelming. Hilda had a lot of toad and slug in her cocktail and his inner cat didn’t particularly like it, but it wasn’t too interested. The tunnel was guarded at regular intervals by a whole bunch of Dix’s people, and they had a lot of gopher in their cocktails. Alec’s inner cat wanted to hunt them and he was having a lot of trouble supressing the instinct.  By the time they came up inside Terminal City, Alec’s face was shiny with sweat, the fur of his tail was standing on end and the miasma of scents was becoming overwhelming. When they reached the command center in HQ, Dix, Luke, Mole and Joshua converged on them, welcoming Alec back, asking him where he’d been and…Alec was suddenly too hot. He stripped off the coat and the hat and Mole gasped around the cigar in his mouth.

“Alec,” Joshua pointed at his tail. “Alec cat boy.”

It was…just…too much. Alec backed away, his tail puffed up, his shoulders tensed and a low, threatening rumbling began to shake its way out of his chest.

“Alec,” Max took a step toward him and Alec hissed at her.

And then he ran.

He wasn’t X-5 fast, but Alec was fast enough. Okay, it probably helped that no-one had actually followed him, but still.

The building that housed HQ had been a Convention Center, pre-pulse, and had an industrial kitchen, as well as a gym and an Olympic-sized swimming pool. Alec tore out of the command center and took a right, away from the popular, high-traffic areas of HQ, away from the housing area to the left, and toward the old department store warehouse on the other side.

At Manticore, Alec and his cohort had been taught that people very rarely looked up and that given their own enhanced capacity to jump high, a vertical exit strategy was often a sensible tactic. Alec had always been fond of heights; Biggs had enjoyed them too. And given how often Alec had found Max chilling on top of the Space Needle, he figured that it might be a fairly general X-5 trait. Now he wondered if it might not have something to do with their feline DNA, because his inner cat was telling him pretty damn adamantly that it wanted to go up.

Alec came to a stop in a section of the warehouse that had an upper level of loft-style storage. Whatever Virginia had done to him was affecting his ability to jump, so Alec used the ladder to climb up into the loft and then detached it and pushed it to the ground. He backed himself against the loft wall and then lay down and curled himself into a ball, his nose on his tail.         


	4. Chapter 4

**M** ax immediately moved to follow Alec and Logan stopped her with a hand to her shoulder. She jerked away instinctively and glared at him.

“Sorry,” he said.

“You will be,” Max scowled, “when the virus infects you and you get sick.”

Logan didn’t bother to respond to that comment. “Just…give Alec a moment,” he said.

Max raised an eyebrow. “Don’t you think we should go after him?”

Logan nodded. “Sure. But…just let him have a moment to regroup.”

Mole took his unlit cigar out of his mouth. “Who the hell got their hands on him?” he demanded. “And why’d they mess with him like that?”

Logan brought them up to date on Virginia Rossi’s recent activities; what she’d done to Alec and why.

Next to him, Joshua whined softly, his heavy brow furrowed with confusion. “Upstairs lady put lots more cat in Alec’s cocktail?”

“That’s right,” Logan said. 

 Joshua tilted his head. “Upstairs lady want to make him into tricks and treats for bad people to get busy with?”

“Essentially…yeah,” Logan said cautiously.

Joshua growled.

“Joshua, can you track him?” Max asked.

The dog-man nodded.

“You should go with him, Logan,” Max said. “Alec doesn’t find you threatening. Maybe he could come and stay with you for a while. I think there are too many scents here for him to feel comfortable; it doesn’t feel like his territory.”

Logan’s lips thinned. Alec was…well, there was a reason Max had named him Alec. Logan got along with him well enough. The Transgenic respected him—whipping his ass at pool that time had helped; standing shoulder-to-shoulder with the Transgenics, because it was the right thing to do hadn’t hurt his standing in Alec’s eyes either. And saving Alec’s ass when he was taking a beating during the Jam Pony siege had been the icing on the cake. So yeah, they got along. But that didn’t mean that Logan was looking forward to having a bored, pissed off Alec hanging around him 24/7.

Offering Alec sanctuary at his place was, however, the right thing to do, so Logan told Max that he would do it and then turned to Joshua.

“Lead on, Big Fella,” he said.

Joshua leaned forward and began to sniff. And then he took off.

Logan hurried after him, through the command center, past the stores, through the section of the building that still hadn’t been properly fixed up yet and out through a side door. Snuffling and panting, Joshua led him into the warehouse next door, stopping, finally, at a fallen ladder. He sniffed and then tilted his head back.

“Alec up there,” he said quietly.

Logan cupped his hands around his mouth. “You alright, Alec?” he called.

For a moment there was nothing but silence and then Alec’s disembodied voice sounded from above “Sure,” he said bleakly. “I’m always alright.”

Joshua met Logan’s eyes and shook his head sadly. “Pretty colors outside,” he whispered. “Blackness inside.”

Logan nodded his agreement. “With all due respect,” he said to Alec, “I don’t think you’re on the same continent as _alright_ at the moment, let alone the same zip code.” 

Alec sighed. “Leave me alone, Logan,” he said. “Just…stay outta my business.”

Logan righted the ladder. “I can’t do that,” he said, as he began to climb. “Max always says that Manticore got a lot wrong,” above him Alec snorted derisively. “But that the one good thing they taught you all was to never abandon your unit.”

Alec snorted again. “Yeah, I’ve heard that cheesy line from her before. But thanks to Max there is no more Manticore, I no longer have a unit, and even if I did, you wouldn’t be part of it. So feel free to abandon me.”

Logan reached the top of the ladder and peered over the ledge at Alec’s bright green eyes, which were shining out of the darkness. 

“A couple of weeks back, I saved your life,” Logan said. “And according to an ancient Chinese proverb, when you save someone’s life, you become responsible for it, so—”

“I studied Chinese language and culture for a mission a couple of years ago,” Alec interrupted. “That’s not any Chinese belief I’ve ever heard of.”

Logan frowned. “Okay,” he said. “Well,” he ran a hand through his hair. “It’s from an ancient 1975 philosophy espoused by David Carradine.”

Alec stared at him.

“ _Kung Fu_?” Logan said.

Alec just looked perplexed.

“Right. Manticore probably didn’t have you studying twentieth century cult classic TV shows, did they? Look, bottom line, Alec. You’re obviously not going to be comfortable here; too many different scents; the cat in you is going to be on edge all the time, running and hiding. And you’re not at full strength. Also, we still don’t really know exactly what Virginia Rossi did to you; I should probably run some tests and—” 

“Okay!” Alec interrupted. “If I agree to come back to your place for a few days, will you stop with the Mama Bear routine?”

\--

Logan helped himself to a beer from the small, ancient bar fridge that Joshua had left behind in the house when he moved to Terminal City. He drank half of it down quickly and then wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and cleared his throat.

“You want a beer, Alec?” he asked.

There was no response. Alec was a little busy sniffing everything in the house and rubbing his scent into the furniture. Logan was trying not to notice.

“Alec?” he said again.

“Yeah?” Alec was so close that Logan could feel the puff of his breath against his ear.

“Jesus _Christ_!” he flinched and spun to face his houseguest. “I swear I’m gonna put a bell on all of you!”

Alec raised an eyebrow.

“Because you’re all sneaky Transgenics,” Logan hurried to clarify. “Not because,” he gestured at Alec’s ears, “you know.”

There was a long moment of silence during which Alec remained standing way too close, his nostrils flaring occasionally and…oh…Alec was scenting him. Well. That wasn’t awkward. Not at all.

“I’m sorry,” Alec said. Logan was just about to tell him it was alright, when Alec leaned forward and began to rub his face against Logan’s.

“I, uh, um, what…” Logan took a step backwards and Alec followed, which left Logan pressed up against the bar fridge.

“Beer?” he lifted the extra that he’d snagged for Alec earlier and tried to wedge it in between them.

Alec pulled back and accepted the bottle. “Thanks,” he said. And then he vanished into the living room, his tail sticking straight up behind him.

Logan stayed where he was, his heart pounding and his breathing shaky. That was. Unexpected. Logan’s family had owned cats in his youth; if anyone could ever really be said to _own_ a cat. He knew that Alec was just acting on his feline instincts, instincts that told him to create a group scent by mixing his own scent with that of the other members of his household. It was really very ordinary cat behavior. Nothing for Logan to get excited about. Not that he’d gotten excited. No more than anyone would if they had an incredibly attractive person pressed intimately against them.

Logan took a long pull on his beer. Alec was straight (probably). He himself was mostly straight. And Alec had just been kidnapped and had his body forcibly transformed into something that looked a lot less human at a time when looking not-human was a very bad thing. The last thing Alec needed was Logan’s stupid hormones getting all confused, when all he was doing was responding to the needs of his altered DNA.

Logan followed Alec into the living room. The younger man had curled himself up on the brown-striped arm chair, his knees folded to one side and his tail sticking out over the arm of the chair. He looked up at Logan with lost, dark eyes and Logan didn’t think he’d ever seen Alec looking so vulnerable.

“You alright?” he couldn’t help asking.

Alec turned to face him, his face still, his eyes unblinking, and then he smiled, a beautiful, empty smile. “I’m always alright,” he said.

“So the, ah, what did you call it? Your inner-cat? It feels safe here?”

Alec nodded. “I feel safe around you,” he said. “And you’ve done a good job here, straightening up the place, cleaning. There’s not a lot of Joshua’s scent left, but there’s a lot of disinfectant and a lot of you.”

 Logan grinned. He hadn’t had a lot of time, but he’d managed to get the living area and kitchen, the bathroom, and two of the bedrooms cleaned up. One of the bedrooms was his and the other had all his _Eyes Only_ equipment set up in it.

   There were a couple more spare bedrooms that needed cleaning and a basement jam-packed full of junk, but Logan didn’t think he’d be getting to those any time soon.

“You hungry?” he asked Alec.

“I could eat,” Alec said cautiously.

Logan didn’t have a lot of food in the house. A quick browse of his cupboards revealed some canned tuna, some canned tomatoes, some vegetables and some pasta. Good enough. He used the ingredients to whip up a pasta sauce and then put some salted water on to boil for the pasta.

They ate in silence, the meal accompanied by another beer, and once they’d finished, Logan promised Alec that he’d take him in to see Sam Carr the next day; that they’d run some tests to figure out if any of the changes that Rossi had made to him were reversible. Next, Logan called Matt Sung to let him know about Rossi, and then he spent the evening reading over Rossi’s notes while Alec watched television.  When Logan finally switched off Rossi’s laptop, a little after midnight, he glanced across at Alec and saw that the younger man was curled up in the armchair, asleep. Logan covered him with a blanket and then went to bed.

He awoke in the chilly early hours of the morning, his nose cold and his eyes just able to make out the figure standing in his bedroom doorway.

“Alec?”

Alec shuffled and rubbed a hand across the back of his neck. “It’s cold,” he said softly. “I’m an X-5, I can deal. But the cat doesn’t like it. And,” he hesitated, “it smells safe in your room.”

_What the ever-loving Hell_? Logan rubbed at his eyes and stared hard at Alec.

“Sorry,” Alec said. “Never mind. I’ll just…”

Logan pulled the quilt back and patted the mattress. “Get in,” he said. “Just…no spooning.”

Alec laughed shortly and then edged onto the mattress and curled onto his side, facing away from Logan. By the time Logan fell back to sleep, the sun was rising.

\--

Logan woke up alone. He slipped into the bathroom, shaved, showered and dressed and then ventured into the living room, in search of Alec.

He found the young Transgenic in the spare bedroom where he’d set up all the _Eyes Only_ computers, scrolling through Virginia Rossi’s notes on transforming x-series Transgenics into anomalies. Logan leaned in the doorway and watched Alec’s eyes darting back and forth, his finger tapping rapidly on the down arrow as he consumed the information at lightning-speed.  It was so easy with Alec—and with Max too, for that matter—to look at the pretty packaging and forget that inside that attractive outer shell was a genius level IQ.

Alec hadn’t said much about the Rachel Berrisford incident, but Logan had learned from Max that Alec had stolen the identity of Simon Lehane, a concert-level pianist and part time piano teacher, in order to infiltrate the family. Logan couldn’t imagine that Manticore had its creations learning how to play the piano as a matter of routine; it seemed more likely that Alec had learned how to do so specifically for the mission. And that was quite an achievement.

“I’m sorry about imposing on you last night,” Alec said suddenly.

“It wasn’t an imposition,” Logan reassured him. “In fact, it was thoughtless of me not to offer you the bed. An armchair is hardly a comfortable place for someone of your size to sleep. So. I apologize for being a poor host. ”

Alec stared at Logan and then shook his head slightly before running a hand across his mouth. “You’ve read all this?” he gestured at Rossi’s laptop.

Logan nodded.

“What’s your take?” Alec asked.

Logan took his glasses off and polished them on the hem of his shirt before looking up and meeting Alec’s eyes. “The good news is that she was supressing your speed and strength with drugs, so that’ll return, probably already has. And, uh, as for the tail and the ears…I think it could be reversible. True genetic alteration is only really possible at the cellular stage. The original changes to your human DNA structure, the incorporation of animal DNA, would’ve been done in vitro. These more recent changes were more…epigenetic.  Essentially, she altered some of the ‘ignore this’ ‘exaggerate that’ carbon-hydrogen markers to accentuate some of your feline characteristics. I only have a very basic understanding of genetics, but I think that all we’d need to do would be to flick some switches back to off and, uh, turn down the volume on a few others, so to speak.”

Alec raised a skeptical eyebrow. “I don’t think my tail’s gonna just drop off,” he said.

Logan agreed. “It may have to be surgically removed. But the ears might change back to their original shape, spontaneously.”

Alec huffed. “I made coffee,” he said. “It’s in the pot.”

Logan went and made himself a cup and helped himself to a blueberry bagel. “Did you eat?” he called out to Alec.

“Yeah.  Had some toast. Thanks.”

Logan gravitated back into the computer room and told Alec between bites of bagel that he would call Sam and arrange for them to go in and see him.  “We’ll get him to run some blood tests, just to dot all the Is and cross all the Ts. I think we should do some x-rays and an ultrasound too.”

Alec grinned suddenly, his eyes and mouth crinkling in a way that made him look like a six-year-old.  “We should probably do a cat scan too, right?” he said waggling his eyebrows.


	5. Chapter 5

“ **W** ow,” Sam said when Alec took off his coat. “Wow. That’s. That’s really a tail, huh?”

Alec raised an eyebrow and Logan could practically see a cuttingly sarcastic response brewing in him. He forestalled it by handing Sam the folder with the printouts of Rossi’s project notes and case notes, and babbling, somewhat inarticulately, about methyl groups and histones and his own conclusion that the changes would hopefully be reversible. “And we thought we should bring him along for blood tests and an ultrasound,” he concluded, “just to see if there’s anything we should be aware of or worried about or, just…anything really.”

Alec was surprisingly cooperative, sitting still and quiet while Sam took vial after vial of blood out of his arm.

“Alright,” Sam said when he’d finished taking the blood. “Apart from the tail, are there any other physical anomalies that have occurred?”

Alec took off his hat and Sam gasped. He reached forward and tentatively stroked one of Alec’s ears and Alec ducked away, growling threateningly at him.  

“Sorry,” Sam withdrew his hand. “That’s an impressive growl you’ve got there. Do you mind if I take a look at your vocal cords?” he picked up a small flashlight.

Alec glanced at Logan and at Logan’s nod he shrugged and opened his mouth wide.

Sam peered inside. “Huh,” he said. “His vocal cords just look standard. Big cats have slightly fatter vocal cords which allow them to growl really loudly. Can you purr?”

Alec shrugged.

Sam frowned into his mouth. “How does your tongue feel? Can I…?” He extended a gloved finger toward Alec’s mouth.  Alec sighed and then stuck his tongue out.

“Wow,” Sam said. “Your tongue has considerably more papillae than a standard human tongue. Even through the glove it feels rough.” He cleared his throat. “Okay. We’ll do some x-rays now.”

After the x-rays, Sam rubbed at his chin. “Um, okay, I’d like to take a closer look at that tail now, so, uh, if you wouldn’t mind taking your jeans off and then lying face down on the table?”

Alec’s eyes narrowed, but he did as he was asked, quickly and efficiently.

“Huh,” Sam squeezed the base of Alec’s tail and lifted it slightly causing Alec to growl again. “She’s utilized the vestibular human tail bone for his feline tail. Fascinating.”

Alec’s tail twitched. “Glad you think so, Doc,” he said.

“And there are no other physical anomalies?” Sam said. “No…intimate changes that you may be concerned about?”

Alec looked back over his shoulder at Sam. “ _Intimate_ changes?”

Sam flushed slightly. “No…changes to your genitalia?”

Alec raised an eyebrow.  “Why, Doc,” he said, “are you trying to ask me if I have a barbed penis?”

Beside him, Logan sniggered. “I’d forgotten about that particularly peculiarity of cat anatomy. I can’t imagine that Rossi would’ve, uh, turned that feature on, given the, uh, circumstances.”

Alec’s lips twisted. “You’d be surprised. People can be kinky fuckers. But no, I’m still just packing my standard issue, x-series, bigger and better than human, but definitely human, dick.”

 Sam cleared his throat. “Okay, roll onto your back please and we’ll do an ultrasound, just to make sure your internal organs are all still standard issue too.”

The gel was cold against his stomach and felt kind of gross. Alec stared up at the ceiling and waited for Sam to give him a clean bill of health. Only after a while, Sam started frowning and jabbing the ultrasound wand into his belly and when Alec looked at him he was frowning. At Manticore, physicals were a standard part of life and Alec had enough experience to know when a doctor had found something that was going to get him sent down to the labs or into psy-ops.

“What is it?” he asked.

“I won’t be entirely sure until I’ve done a colonoscopy, but you seem to have some sort of colorectal polyp in your sigmoid colon.”

Alec snorted. “Hello,” he said, “genetically enhanced superior being. I can’t get cancer.”

Sam shook his head and sighed. “Alec, Dr Rossi forced accelerated genetic changes on your body. It took—what? Four days for the changes to your ears and tail to happen. Ordinarily, that level of change would take months. Who knows what side-effects her acceleration of the process could have caused?”

“Great,” Alec’s smile was completely devoid of humor, “my day just keeps getting better and better.”

“Hey,” Logan put a hand to his shoulder. “It could be benign, right Sam?”

“Sure,” Sam nodded. “We won’t know for sure until we’ve done a colonoscopy and a biopsy, which I’m not equipped to do here. I’ll tell you what, let me run your blood work and read through Rossi’s notes and then, in a couple of days, we’ll meet again and decide how we’re going to proceed. Until then, if you feel unwell in any way, call me, and I’ll see what I can do.”

\--

Alec was subdued for the rest of the day, but whenever Logan tried to ask him if he was okay, he got Alec’s standard response, that he was always alright. After lunch, Logan retreated into the _Eyes Only_ computer room to work on cases, or possibly just to get away from Alec’s irritable prowling, downcast eyes and swishing tail.  He ventured out around mid-afternoon and found Alec curled up in a ball on the armchair, fast asleep with his nose on his tail. Logan couldn’t help the soft smile that crept onto his face. Kitty Alec was just too adorable for words.

“That’s creepy, man,” Alec mumbled sleepily.

“Sorry. I was just—”

“You were just watching me sleep, like a creep. Don’t need to have my eyes open to know what you’re doing. My hearing and my sense of smell are pretty awesome these days. Besides, I’m not really sleeping, just…catnapping.”

Well…that was uncomfortable. Could Alec hear that Logan’s heart beat had started to accelerate whenever he saw the younger man? Could he smell that Logan had started to feel as if Alec were his to protect?

“Dude!”

Logan looked down into amused, decidedly open, green eyes.

“Sorry,” he said. “Did you, uh, can I get you anything?”

Alec stretched. “Not unless you have a sofa tucked away somewhere.”

Logan shook his head and then watched as Alec got to his feet, all grace and elegance. The younger man stretched again, his Henley riding up and exposing his stomach and Logan turned and hurried back to the computer room, walking into the door frame as he babbled something about a case over his shoulder.

Behind him, Alec chuckled. “Do you mind if I go and stretch out on the bed?” he asked.

Logan told him that was fine and then tried to concentrate on his re-opened investigation into Frankie Moretti and not on the thought of Alec spread out on his bed.

Sometime later there was a loud crash and a muffled curse and Logan was on his feet and charging for the bedroom before he’d even realized he was going to move.

Alec was on his hands and knees by the side of the bed picking up shards of glass.

“Are you okay?” Logan asked. “What happened?”

“I dropped the glass,” Alec refused to meet his eyes.

Logan frowned. “So…what caused that big crash? That wasn’t just a glass breaking.”

“It was nothing.”

Logan stared at him and Alec rubbed at his brow and then sighed. “Okay. Just…promise me you won’t laugh, okay?”

Logan nodded. “Scout’s honor.”

Alec met his eyes briefly and then looked away. “I picked up your water glass to take a drink, the sunlight coming in through the cracks in the blinds reflected off the moving water and there may have been a…sunbeam type of thing bobbing up and down on that wall over there, that may have triggered my, uh, predatory instincts.”

Logan couldn’t help it, he laughed.

“You said you wouldn’t laugh!”

“I’m sorry. You have to admit though, it’s a little funny. I mean, you tried to chase a sunbeam!”

Alec’s lips twitched. “I would’ve had it too, pin point lethal accuracy. Only it vanished when I dropped the water glass to leap at it.”

Logan took his glasses off and wiped at his eyes. “Well if nap time’s over and it’s play time now, I think the basement has mice.”

He’d been joking. The way Alec’s eyes gleamed with mischief and excitement was a little disconcerting.

\--

Alec actually caught a mouse. He brought it to show Logan too. He was less than impressed when Logan told him he was a good kitty and petted him on the head.

\--

 Logan was still in the computer room when Alec announced that he was going to bed.

Sometime later Logan was deeply focused on the rough draft of an _Eyes Only_ cable hack script that he was writing when he felt someone’s eyes on him. Alec was standing in the door way, watching him.

“Is everything okay?” Logan asked.

Alec nodded. “Only,” he hesitated. “You should be in bed now.”

Logan raised an eyebrow. “Right. Well. I’ve just got to finish this. I won’t be long.”

“Okay,” Alec said. “But really, you shouldn’t still be in here now. Now’s when you should be in bed.”

Logan stared at him. “I’ll be there in a minute.”

Alec huffed. He shuffled from foot to foot. He sighed. And then he came and sat on the edge of Logan’s desk, slowly edging sideways until he was practically on top of the keyboard.

Logan wheeled his chair back a little. “Uh, Alec?”  The younger man’s tail was twitching and his pupils were so dilated, Logan could barely see the green in them. “What are you doing?”

Alec chewed on his bottom lip. “Apparently I have really bad OCD now. Or the cat part of me does anyway. You’re supposed to be in bed now. I…or the cat, at least, doesn’t like it that you aren’t.”

Logan took his glasses off and polished them on the hem of his shirt. “So, essentially, you’re going to take a leaf out of your furry four-legged cousin’s playbook and sit on my keyboard until I do what you want me to?”

Alec tilted his head. “Pretty much,” he agreed.

“Okay then,” Logan leaned around Alec and saved the document he’d been working on and then shut the computer down. “Bed time it is.”

\--

Logan awoke to a loud rumbling noise and hot breath against his ear. One of Alec’s arms was slung carelessly over his torso and Alec’s legs were entwined with his. So much for the no spooning rule. And… Oh God…what was that pressing into his hip? Logan swallowed. Well. This was awkward. Should he try to slip out without waking Alec up? Logan doubted he could actually manage to pull that off. Should he just pretend to be asleep until Alec woke up? Surely with his enhanced genetics Alec would be able to slip out sneakily while Logan faked sleep, and then they could pretend the snuggling hadn’t happened. Or maybe he should just wake Alec up?

Alec was snoring pretty loudly. Maybe he was sleeping really deeply. Maybe Logan _would_ be able to get out from under him without waking him up. Alec yawned and snuggled up against him and Logan froze in place. The snoring…no…snoring was out, breathe, out, breathe; this sound was in, out, in, out; a real sawing noise.  Alec was…Alec was purring. Logan frowned. Could cats purr while they were sleeping? Or was Alec actually awake?

“Alec?”

“ALEC!”

Alec startled and sprang to the other side of the bed, as far away from Logan as possible.

“Sorry. Sorry. Shit,” Alec said. “I didn’t mean to. It’s just the cat. It’s attracted to your body heat. And your heart beat. It just…it snuggles. And I don’t even realize I’m doing it.”

“It’s okay,” Logan said, pulling himself upright.

“It is?”

“Of course. The nights are cold this time of year. It makes sense that…the cat…would seek out body heat.”

Alec nodded and folded his arms in front of his chest.

“Okay. I’m gonna go and shower,” Logan climbed out of bed. “Feel free to go back to sleep. You seem to need a lot more of it these days. Which makes sense. Did you know that cats sleep or catnap around 85 percent of their day?”

Alec scowled. “Yeah, well. I’m guessing the buyer Rossi had lined up for me wasn’t really gonna care if I never got out of bed.”

Later, when Logan stuck his head in the door after his shower, Alec was asleep again, curled up around Logan’s pillow. He smiled softly and then padded out to the computer room to work.


	6. Chapter 6

**T** he next couple of days all followed the same pattern; Logan went to sleep with Alec sleeping as far away as transgenically possible from him and awoke to find Alec wrapped around him and purring. Alec was mortified. Logan was reassuring. Logan went about his day. Alec went back to sleep. Occasionally, throughout the day, Alec got up and prowled around the house, scent marking the furniture and the doorways and demanding either food or attention. Sometimes both. He cleared the basement of mice and couldn’t seem to shake the habit of bringing their little bodies to Logan, his eyes shining with pride. 

Kitty Alec was in turns standoffish, prickly and easily affronted (much like his more human counterpart) and overwhelmingly affectionate. Logan didn’t mind the affection as much as Alec thought he should. The mornings, when he awoke to find Alec wrapped around him, had quickly become Logan’s favorite part of the day and he really liked the moments when Alec would come and spontaneously rub his face against Logan’s. Alec was always horribly embarrassed when he realized what he’d just done, no matter how many times Logan told him it was alright. He’d always been peripherally aware that Alec was attractive; since he’d admitted to Max that he wasn’t entirely unaffected by the male form it was as if a hitherto locked door had opened and Logan had started to see Alec in a new light. Which was unfortunate. Because Alec was straight.

 Logan pushed away from the desk and got to his feet. “Hey Alec,” he called out as he made his way to the kitchen. “You hungry?”

“I could eat, I guess,” Alec replied a beat later, his voice sounding strangely raspy.

Logan paused. “You alright?”

“Ah, you know me, Logan,” Alec murmured, his voice strained, “I’m always alright.”

Logan didn’t believe him for a second and instead of heading to the kitchen he turned and headed for the bedroom.

Alec was laying spreadeagled on top of the quilt, wearing nothing but his shorts. He lifted his head when Logan entered the room. “Is it just me,” he said, “or is it really, really hot in here?”

Logan rubbed at his chin. “No, it’s just you,” he said.

“Oh,” Alec put his head back down and stared up at the ceiling. “So…I’m sick? This is being sick?”

Logan went and sat on the edge of the bed and put a hand on Alec’s forehead. He was burning up.

“Yeah,” he said. “This is being sick.”

Alec turned to look at him. “I’ve never been sick before. Injured, sure, but even then, we heal fast. Sick kinda sucks, huh, Logan?”

Logan smiled. “Yeah it does. You seem to have a fever. Do you have any other symptoms? Pain? Dizziness? Anything at all that’s unusual?”

“I don’t know,” Alec frowned. “I’m _really_ hot. And I feel…weird.”

Weird. That was helpful. “Weird how?”

Alec bit at his bottom lip. “Uh…sort of…achy, I guess. And, um, sensitive.”

“Okay,” Logan ran a hand across Alec’s brow and Alec leaned into the touch. “I’m gonna call Sam. We were supposed to hear back from him today anyway, and he did say to call if something didn’t seem right.”

 “Okay,” Alec looked up at him with pathetically sad eyes. “I’m just gonna lie here and be sick.”

Sam answered the phone enthusiastically. “Logan! I was just about to call you. I’ve just gotten back from a meeting with a geneticist. I didn’t tell her what was going on, obviously, just sort of skirted around the truth and—”

“Sam!” Logan finally got a word in edgeways. “Alec’s sick.”

“Oh. What are his symptoms?”

Logan told him.

“Does he have a sore throat? A headache? A runny nose?”

“He’s not sniffily and he didn’t mention a sore throat. I’ll double check.”

Logan went back into the bedroom and put the question to Alec, who shook his head.

“No sore throat or headache,” Logan reported to Sam.

“Hmm. Is it his skin that’s sensitive or are his eyes sensitive to light?’

“My skin,” Alec said, his enhanced hearing picking up Sam’s side of the conversation just fine.

Logan put Sam on speaker phone.

“It could be the ‘flu,” Sam said. “Only Alec shouldn’t be able to get the ‘flu.”

“Could it be a side effect of whatever she did to, uh, turn up his cat DNA?” Logan asked.

“It’s possible, I guess. From what the geneticist told me, I believe that Dr Rossi used an epigenetic drug to unlock the genes she wanted to activate, administered some sort of accelerating agent, and then used another epigenetic drug to lock the genes up again when they’d mutated as much as she wanted them to. That’s cutting edge stuff. Who knows what the side effects might be?”

Logan glanced down at Alec. “Did the geneticist you spoke to think we could reverse the changes?”   

“In theory? Yes. In practice? We’re talking cutting edge science, as I said. Somebody may be able to do it, but not me. Rossi’s notes were sufficiently vague on certain precise details. Finding just the right parts of the epigenomes to treat would be like trying to find a bunch of needles in a haystack; way beyond my pay grade, I’m afraid. And even if I could figure it out, the epigenetic drugs available to a regular doctor like me aren't all that specific. I might succeed in blocking or unblocking the genes I wanted to treat, but I might also affect other genes, resulting in potentially dangerous side effects. My recommendation is surgery to remove the tail, plastic surgery on the ears; I have a friend I would trust to do that and keep quiet about it. And in the meantime, you look for another ex-Manticore geneticist to reverse the process.”

  Logan looked down at Alec to see how he was taking the news, but his face was impassive. Logan cleared his throat. “So do you think we should treat Alec as if he had ‘flu?”

“That would be my recommendation. I’ll stop by later if you like and take a look at him; maybe take some more blood.”

In the absence of any better ideas, Logan agreed.

Logan made his mother’s—okay, his mother’s housekeeper’s—cure-all chicken soup and served it to Alec on a tray, along with a large glass of orange juice.

“I would’ve brought you some NyQuil, but I’m guessing pain killers work on you about as well as alcohol does?”

Alec’s smile was sarcastic. “You said it.”

“How are you feeling?” Logan asked.

Alec scowled. “Like crap. Stop asking me.”

Logan held his hands up in a gesture of submission. “Sorry,” he said. “I’ll leave you to it.”

Logan gave it twenty minutes and then went back in to collect the tray.

“Sorry,” Alec said as soon as Logan entered the room. “I’m just…I feel like I’m gonna come out of my skin.”

“Any new symptoms?” Logan asked. “Headache? Sore throat?”

Alec’s pupils dilated. “No,” he said.

“Okay. I’ll let you get some rest,” Logan reached down for the tray and Alec yelped and grabbed hold of it before Logan could take it.

“No, it’s okay, I’ll just…keep that.”

Logan frowned. “Is everything okay, Alec?”

Alec’s nostrils flared and his face seemed to get just a little pinker.

“You remember when Isaac was on the loose,” he said, after a moment, “and you called me to come and help you search the sewers with you? And I told you we were only doing it for Max because she was hot?”

Logan nodded.

“Max is like a sister to me,” Alec said. “It wasn’t Max who I thought was hot.”

Logan stared at him. “Right. You had a thing for Asha. I knew that.”

Alec blinked. “Wow. For a smart guy, you’re really dumb sometimes.”

Alec looked up at him from beneath his eyelashes and flashed a flirty smile. It was a move Logan had seen him pull with countless women, all of whom had promptly fallen into his arms and, if Alec were to be believed, into his bed.

Oh. Logan gaped. “But you’re straight.”

Alec rubbed a hand across his jaw. “Nope,” he said. “All of the x-series were created bi-sexual. Manticore wanted us to be as flexible as possible. Lydecker used to tell us ‘you can often get more information out of a subject with honey than you can with vinegar. In situations where punching or threatening won’t or hasn’t worked, seducing might’.”

Bile rose in Logan’s throat.

“Oh come on, Logan,” Alec said softly. “You knew they had us killing for them by the time we were sixteen. You really think they didn’t have us fucking for them too?”

Logan sat down on the edge of the bed and put his head in his hands. A short moment later he felt Alec’s hand settle on his shoulder. “It’s okay,” Alec said.

Logan straightened up and turned to look at him. “It’s really not,” he looked searchingly into Alec’s eyes. “Are you sure you’re bi? They didn’t just tell you that you were to get you to do certain things? I mean, I’ve never seen either you or Max go after someone of them same sex.”

Alec rubbed his cheek against Logan’s and began to purr.

“Uh, Alec?”

Alec pulled back a little. “Out here,” he said, “the real world…we were taught that it was enemy territory. And every single one of you,” he ran a hand across Logan’s chest, “was a potential enemy soldier. When you’re in enemy territory, it’s important to blend in. And human society is still very heteronormative. Being the hot guy with the boyfriend would’ve drawn too much attention to me. It would’ve been a tactical error.”

Logan cleared his throat. “But, uh, you’re still in enemy territory, right?” Alec was so _very_ close. Concentrating was hard.

Alec chuckled. “Now I have cat ears and a tail. Blending in isn’t really possible anymore,” he leaned forward, his lips mere inches from Logan’s. “I know you want me too,” he whispered, his tone sultry. “I can _smell_ it. And Logan? I am _so_ horny, right now. I want you so bad… I want you to put me on my belly and fuck me good and hard.”

Oh God. Logan tried to scoot back, tried to put some space between himself and Alec, but Alec followed him, intent on kissing him, and the tray crashed to the floor, sending cutlery and crockery flying.

Logan jumped to his feet. “What am I thinking? You’re sick. You’re feverish. You’re obviously…not in your right mind. You…Alec?”

Alec was kneeling on the bed with a panicked expression on his face. He looked briefly at Logan and Logan tried really hard not to notice the impressive bulge in his shorts. Then Alec leapt from the bed and dashed at X-5 speed to the bathroom, locking himself inside.

Logan picked up the tray and the contents that had spilled from it and cleared them away before going and knocking on the bathroom door. “Are you okay, Alec?”

“Get me my cell phone,” Alec’s muffled voice replied from beyond the door.

Logan complied. When he knocked on the door and said that he had it, Alec opened the door just enough to stick a hand out and take the phone.

“You’re welcome,” Logan grumbled, before going in search of his own phone and calling Sam.

“New symptom,” he said, when Sam picked up. “Alec’s _really_ horny. And also apparently bi-sexual, which I didn’t know, and when a hot guy who you’re attracted to begs you to fuck him, it’s really hard to say no! What the hell is going on, Sam?”

There was a loud exhale on the other end of the line. “Um, okay,” Sam said. “Are there, uh, any female cats around? Maybe there’s one in the neighborhood that’s in heat and, because of his altered DNA, Alec’s responding to that and going into a rut?”

“Oh,” said Logan. He wasn’t sure whether to be relieved or disappointed. On the one hand, this could explain Alec’s symptoms, meaning he wasn’t actually sick. On the other hand, it also meant that Alec wasn’t _really_ attracted to him. He frowned. “But…he wanted me to…to, um, top.”

Sam sighed. “This situation wasn’t exactly covered in med school, you know. Alec’s DNA may have been messed with, but he isn’t actually a cat. He still has all his human cognitive abilities.  If he asked you to top, maybe it’s because that’s his personal preference?”

Logan finished up the call and went and waited for Alec outside the bathroom. He slid to the floor with his back to the wall and sat with his arms resting over his bent knees, his cell phone held loosely in his hand. Beyond the closed bathroom door, he could hear the rise and fall of Alec’s voice, talking urgently, in low tones, to whoever was on the other end of the line.

When the door finally swung open, Alec was flushed and sweaty and his pupils were huge. He looked down at Logan and then sank to the floor opposite and sat mirroring him.

“I spoke to Sam,” said Logan, at the exact same time that Alec said, “I spoke to Max.”

“What did she say?” Logan said, just as Alec said, “What did he say?”

“Sam thinks you’ve gone into a rut,” Logan said, at the same time as Alec said, “Max thinks I’ve gone into heat.”

“What?” they said in unison.

“But you’re male,” Logan said.

Alec chuckled humorlessly. “You’re talking about people who can splice together DNA from multiple different species and come up with walking, talking geniuses with super-human capabilities. You really think mixing features from different sexes would be difficult for them?”

“I guess not,” Logan conceded.

“And think about it,” Alec added. “Rossi was in the process of making me into a live action sex toy. A heat makes so much more sense than a rut. I want to be fucked so badly, right now, Logan. Something like that would be a major selling point. And what are the odds that she also had some kind of drug she was going to administer to keep me in a permanent heat cycle?”  

Logan looked at Alec, alarmed. “Do you think you can you get pregnant?”

Alec licked at his lips. “Not if you wear a condom.”

Logan pushed at his glasses. “Alec…we can’t have sex.”

Alec pouted. “Why not?”

“Because your consent would be dubious, at best.  Max told me that she hated what going into heat did to her, hated what it made her do. I can’t do that to you, Alec. I can’t be something that you end up regretting.”


	7. Chapter 7

**L** ogan was being typically, stupidly noble and Alec just wasn’t having it. He was trembling with need, feverish with desire and his cock was hard enough to drill through reinforced steel. On top of which, his asshole was leaking copious amounts of slick and had been ever since he’d tried to kiss Logan.

“No way,” he said to Logan. “You are not gonna be this lame. I am in heat _right now_. This is not gonna be one of those famous Logan Cale ‘it’s just not the right time’ deals. No way. You are going to fuck me right now.”

Logan looked at him as if he was some sort of pathetic, fragile creature. Or Max.

“That’s just the heat talking,” he said and his voice was so kind, so gentle that Alec fell a little bit more in love with him, even as he wanted to smack him upside his stupid, stubborn, do-gooder head.

“I am a perfectly rational, genetically-empowered individual,” Alec said from between gritted teeth. “Yes, I have a biological imperative to get fucked right now. I also have a biological imperative to breathe and I don’t see you trying to stop me from doing that because it’s ‘just my need for oxygen talking’. You’re over-thinking this.”

 Logan remained frustratingly placid. “It’s a little different,” he said. “We’re talking about physical intimacy between two people, not an autonomic biological function.”

“Right,” said Alec. “But I have to do it, and I have to do it now. So I’d prefer to do it with someone I trust, someone who I care about and who cares about me.”

Logan looked anguished. “You only think you care because you’re in heat.”

Alec stared at him. “That’s what this is about? You’re not sure that I _like_ you? Could you be more lame, Logan?”

When Logan didn’t respond, Alec got to his feet, staggering slightly as the full force of his need hit him. “Okay, fine. I’ll go put some clothes on, head down to Terminal City. I’m sure somebody down there will be willing to give me a deep, hard dicking, put me out of my misery.”

He turned away from Logan and walked toward the bedroom, his tail drooping between his legs.

“Alec?” Logan’s voice was tight, “the back of your shorts are soaking wet.”

“Oh yeah,” Alec drawled. “That’s another Virginia Rossi special feature. Apparently I now have a self-lubing asshole.”

 “Jesus. Alec, I’m sorry.”

 Alec made it into the bedroom and sagged against the wall for a moment, before stripping off his wet shorts and changing into clean ones. “Are you kidding?” he said. “This is actually awesome. I’m definitely keeping this feature.” He picked up his jeans and began to struggle into them.

“Don’t go,” Logan was suddenly right in front of him.

 “Give me a reason to stay,” Alec said.

Logan ran a hand through his hair, his expression anguished.  “If only I could be sure that you’re capable of genuine consent right now.”

Alec was hot and hard and his asshole was throbbing. He so didn’t have time for this.

“Look,” he said, “I’ve had a lot of casual sex. If I’ve got an itch, I scratch it. No big deal. This? This is a very bad itch. And I’m going to scratch it. Now, are you gonna help me with that or not?”

Logan looked conflicted. Either that or constipated.  “C’mon, Logan,” Alec said softly. “Do you really think I’d have let you beat me at pool if I didn’t like you?”

Logan raised an eyebrow. “You didn’t let me win that game,” he said. “I beat you fair and square.”

Alec smirked. “Whatever you’ve gotta tell yourself. Are you gonna fuck me or not? I’m not gonna beg.”

Logan just stared at him.

“Okay,” Alec turned away, frustrated and disappointed, and headed for the door. “I’ve gotta go then.”

Logan reached out and grabbed at his shoulder and Alec whirled instinctively to face him, ears flat and lips curled in a snarl.

Logan let go of him. “Easy tiger,” he said, and Alec was just done. Done being patient, done clamping down on his desperate need. He surged against Logan, fisted his hands in the man’s hair and kissed him hard, biting and licking at his lips until Logan let him in. He thrust his tongue against Logan’s and revelled in the man’s moan and the way his arms came up to wrap around Alec, holding him safe and secure. Eventually he remembered that Logan couldn’t hold his breath as long as an X-5 could, and he pulled back from the kiss.

“Your tongue feels like sandpaper,” Logan said.

Alec shrank a little. “Sorry.”

Logan shook his head. “No, it’s not bad. Just…different.”

Alec palmed at Logan’s crotch and was pleased to find him hard.  “I need this in me yesterday,” he said.

Logan’s eyes sparkled. “I thought first we could have a nice chicken pasta with a pre-pulse bottle of Chardonnay.”

“No,” Alec growled. “Your cock, my ass. Now.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes. So sure. So very sure. Please, Logan. Please fuck me.”

Logan’s lips twitched. “I thought you weren’t gonna beg?”

“Stop talking,” Alec said and started to peel off his jeans. His new pair of shorts were already soaked through, and he tore them off quickly and then started to propel a still-dressed Logan toward the bed. “Strip,” he said.    

Logan just stared at him. Or more precisely, he stared at Alec’s cock, which was red and swollen and leaking pre-come.

“Logan?”

Logan shook himself and then dropped to his knees. He grasped Alec’s dick firmly in one hand and then began to mouth at the head, licking and sucking, and Alec sat down heavily on the edge of the bed, swore, and came in Logan’s mouth. It wasn’t enough; not nearly enough; it didn’t even take the edge off.  Alec watched as most of the come dribbled out of Logan’s mouth and ran down his chin, and he couldn’t resist the temptation to lean forward and clean it up with his tongue.

Logan shuddered. “That tickles.”

“Condoms?”

Logan’s face fell. “I don’t have any.”

Alec raised an eyebrow.

“I had to pack up and leave in a hurry,” Logan said. “Condoms didn’t make the ‘essentials’ list and I haven’t bought any since then, because sex hasn’t exactly been a priority.”

“Got a box in my duffel,” Alec moved at speed to the duffel bag he’d brought with him from Terminal City. He tossed the box to Logan and was back beside him in a heartbeat.  He yanked Logan’s pants down and then pushed him down onto the bed and stripped them from him.

“This box is only half full,” Logan said.

Alec glanced up at him. “Told you, if I’ve got an itch, I scratch. I don’t believe in waiting for the perfect moment. When you’ve been dead a hundred years, you’ve only just begun to be dead. If it feels good, do it, that’s my motto.”

Alec climbed up onto the bed and presented himself to Logan for mating, forearms down on the bed, chest lowered, ass raised, and tail lifted and flicked to one side.

Behind him, Logan groaned. “Jesus,” he said.

Alec felt two fingers rub across his hole. “You’re so wet,” Logan marvelled.

“All the better for you to get your big cock in there and fuck me good and proper, Mr Wolf,” Alec said.

Logan pushed two fingers up inside of him and it was good, oh so good, but it wasn’t enough.

“It’s like sliding into warm butter,” Logan said.

“No food analogies. And get on with the fucking.”

 Logan chuckled. “I should’ve known you’d be a pushy bottom.” But he added a third finger and started to fuck in and out hard, scissoring and stretching and rubbing at Alec’s prostate and Alec yowled and came again, which only served to ratchet his need up another notch. Logan pulled his fingers out and Alec would’ve protested, except that almost immediately he felt the head of Logan’s sheathed dick against his slippery, clenching hole.

“I can’t believe you’re still hard,” Logan said, in that incredulous tone he’d been using ever since he first saw Alec’s leaking hole.

Alec rocked back against him and managed to get the head of Logan’s dick to slip just inside. Logan got the message and began to push up into his ass, slow and steady. Alec raised his hips even higher and yowled, his ass wiggling and his hips jerking helplessly as he clenched his fists in the quilt cover and urged Logan to take him deeper, faster, harder. Logan complied, holding Alec firmly by the hips and ramming home, his fat, heavy dick filling Alec beautifully, shoving up inside him, big and hot, stretching him so wide that Alec knew he was going to feel battered and bruised later; but now he just felt awesome, his body warm and good and content, as Logan bottomed out and then held himself completely still.

“C”mon,” Alec rasped. “Need you to fuck me.”

Logan ran a soothing hand along his flank. “It’s okay, Alec,” he said, “I’ve got you. Gonna take good care of you, give you what you need.”

Alec squirmed. “What I need, is for you to fuck me.”

Logan chuckled. “So impatient.”

He began to pump into Alec with sure, certain strokes and Alec kneaded the quilt and trilled happily, as Logan brushed against his prostate. Oh, this was good. This was amazing. This was soothing the fire that had been burning inside of him. The weight of Logan’s dick felt awesome as it nudged in deep, hammering into him, _owning_ him and filling the emptiness. Alec started to yowl as he felt his orgasm building within him. Logan’s cock was rubbing and pressing and stabbing in all the right places and Alec could have sobbed with how good it felt. Instead, he chittered and yowled and panted and came hard, for the third time that afternoon, his ass contracting rhythmically and sending Logan over the edge shortly after.

Logan pulled out and Alec collapsed down onto his belly. He closed his eyes and purred and listened to Logan getting rid of the condom. By the time the man came and lay down beside him, the fire in Alec’s belly had re-stoked itself. He cracked open an eye. Logan had a stupid, goofy smile on his face.

“How long until you can go again?” Alec asked him.      

Logan’s eyes widened. “Seriously?”

Alec growled. “I’m in heat, Logan.”

Logan excused himself and left the room. Alec could hear him talking to someone on his cell phone, but his voice was sufficiently low that Alec couldn’t make out the words. By the time Logan returned, Alec had three fingers stuffed up his ass, but it wasn’t really helping.

“I spoke to Sam,” Logan said. “A female cat’s heat cycle lasts anywhere from three to fourteen days, or until she gets impregnated. We believe you can’t get impregnated, so…”

“I could be like this for two weeks. And you can’t fuck me every fifteen minutes for two weeks.”

Logan was very deliberately not looking at him and Alec realized that he still had his fingers stuffed up his ass.

“Sam’s going to drop off a vibrator for us. He also suggested…” Logan trailed off uncomfortably.

“What?”

“He suggested that we forgo the condom next time. He said if you can get pregnant, then the morning after pill should work, and even if you can’t, it’s possible that just coming into contact with, um, semen, may help to soothe the heat and give us longer between bouts.”

“Okay,” Alec nodded. “Can you go again yet?”

Logan sighed. “Give me another ten minutes.”

Alec groaned and thunked his head against the mattress.

Logan smiled softly. “I’m going to get us both a glass of water and see what snacks I can find. Gotta keep hydrated and keep our strength up, right?”

\--

Getting fucked bareback was awesome. Just the raw slide of skin on skin was enough to have Alec yowling with pleasure. When Logan came, hot and wet, deep inside of him, Alec orgasmed with a yowl that was a cross between a howl and a scream. He fell asleep almost as soon as Logan pulled out and didn’t wake up for three hours.

\--

Between Logan and the vibrator and a very powerful sedative, they managed to keep Alec comfortable for four days and when he woke up on the morning of the fifth day, the flames that had been licking at his insides, the needy pain, was gone.

Alec hoped to God that didn’t mean he was pregnant.


	8. Epilogue

**L** ogan should have gone with him.

He took another long swig of his beer and re-focused on the television, but he wasn’t really watching; couldn’t have even said what was on the screen. He looked at his watch again. Alec should’ve been back by now.

Logan should _definitely_ have gone with him.

Only Alec wouldn’t let him.

“Hey.”

Logan slopped beer down the front of his shirt. “Jesus Christ, Max! Are you ever gonna learn to knock?”

Max wrinkled her nose. “Probably not,” she clasped her hands behind her back and cleared her throat. “So. I just thought I’d stop by and see if I was gonna be an aunt. Where’s Alec?”

Logan adjusted his glasses. “He’s not back yet.”

Max’s face fell ever so slightly. “What do you think that means?”

Logan shrugged. “We don’t even know if he can get pregnant. I mean, he’s still genetically male, despite what Rossi did with the heat and so on. But then there’s that lump inside of him and Sam was worried that maybe it was designed to turn into some sort of womb. Who the hell knows what madness Manticore’s geneticists are capable of creating.”

Max came and sat down on the coffee table, opposite Logan. “Did you two talk about it?” she asked. “What you’d do if…”

Logan’s eyebrows shot up. “This is Alec we’re talking about. He’s being very flippant about the whole thing.”

“Right,” said Max. “When the going gets tough, Alec starts quipping.”

Logan sighed and leaned back in the armchair. “Do you want a beer?” he asked.

At Max’s nod he told her to help herself from the fridge. When she came back she sat down against the wall opposite, keeping her distance, and took a long drink. They talked idly for a while about how things were going at Terminal City, about the Human/Transgenic Alliance that Original Cindy and Sketchy had formed and how they were doing their best to convince their fellow human beings that Transgenics weren’t an abomination to be feared, but just people, with slightly different attributes, trying to make their way in a broken world, same as everyone else.

“Did you know,” Logan said after a while, “that Alec claims he let me win that pool game on purpose?”

Max inclined her head and shrugged.

Logan straightened up and stared at her. “You knew?”

Max shrugged again. “Alec doesn’t lose at pool,” she said. “Not unless he means to.”

The front door slammed shut and Alec called out, “Honey, I’m home!”

He rounded the corner into the living room, throwing off his hat and coat, and looked down at Max, who stayed very still and avoided eye contact.  “Hi Max,” he said softly.

Max lifted her head. “You alright, Alec?”

Alec grinned. “I’m always alright, Maxi.” He spun to face Logan, his arms held out wide. “So,” he said. “Guess who’s having kittens?”

Logan’s mouth fell open and he was pretty sure he looked as horrified as Max did.

“Not me,” Alec said. “I am most definitely _not_ equipped to carry and birth children.” He chuckled. “You should’ve seen the look on your face, though. Both of you.  I thought _you_ were gonna have kittens! It was priceless.”

   “Hilarious,” Logan said sourly. “What took so long, then?”

“Well, there was the colonoscopy. _That_ was fun. That lump? Turns out it’s the lube factory.”

“Do I even wanna know?” Max said.

“No,” said Logan. And then he clapped a hand over Alec’s mouth before he could gross Max out with the details. Alec retaliated by licking his hand and then there was some wrestling, and Alec ended up straddling Logan’s lap with his tail sticking straight up behind him.

“I should go,” Max said, putting her beer down and climbing to her feet. She wasn’t quite able to keep the bittersweet from her tone. They were cute together; far more functional than she and Logan had ever been, despite their unconventional start. It hurt a little, but she was happy for them.

“Sorry,” Alec climbed off Logan’s lap, looking contrite.  He perched on the arm of the chair. “Before you go, the other reason everything took so long was that I met up with the plastic surgeon. She can definitely make my ears look human again, and she and Sam can take care of the tail too.” For a moment Alec looked mournful. “I kind of like the tail,” he said. “But anyway, it’s set up for next week.”

“You know that you don’t have to have the surgery, right?” Logan said. “Not if you don’t want to.”

Alec pulled a face. “No, I want to. It’s too hard for me to do my job if I can’t pass as human.”

“What about the heats?” Logan asked. “Did Sam have any idea how often they’re going to happen?”

“Oh!” Alec reached into his jacket pocket and took out a box of medication and a box of syringes. “Sam gave me this.  Depo-Provera. It’s a synthetic progesterone hormone that’s used for birth control in women, but vets use it too, to suppress heat cycles in cats and dogs. He gave me an injection today, and from now on I have to inject myself once a month, to stop myself from going into heat.” Alec rubbed at the back of his neck. “Sam did say that I should let myself have at least one heat a year, for health reasons. But, uh, hopefully we’ll have found an ex-Manticore geneticist to reverse this whole thing by then.”

Max hugged him and told him it sounded like he’d be back to his old self in no time.

When she’d gone, Logan folded his arms and raised an eyebrow. “It’s not that simple though, is it?” he said. “The surgery and the suppressants aren’t going to affect your inner cat in the slightest.”

Alec sighed and crawled back onto Logan’s lap. “I’m learning how to manage it,” he said. “Give me a few more weeks and I’m pretty sure I’ll be able to keep a lid on the cat most of the time,” he looked up at Logan, “so long as I can let it out at home, just let myself be,” his lips twitched, “Kitty Alec, in all his kittenish glory.”

“Of course,” said Logan, his heart bursting with pride that he was the one Alec trusted his vulnerability to. He hesitated and then said, “and this is home, right? You and me, we’re…”

“Yeah,” Alec rested his head against Logan’s chest and curled himself up on Logan’s lap.

“Do you want to go and lie down?”

Alec shook his head. “I kind of want to snuggle,” he said. “Maybe let you pet my ears while I’ve still got them.”

Logan smiled. “You really are a big softie, aren’t you?”

Alec looked up at him with big, bright eyes. “Don’t you tell anyone,” he said gruffly.

Logan stroked Alec’s ears and Alec began to purr.

“There’s my pretty kitty,” Logan teased gently.

Alec rolled his eyes. “Yeah, yeah,” he said. “Blah, blah, meow, meow.”

_The End_

 

_Thanks for reading! I hope you've enjoyed the story. :)_


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